Studio City Rehabilitation Center

Although we were not high on this facility overall, we awarded it a B for our inspections category. This score is far more impressive than the nursing home's overall grade. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home's next best category is long-term care. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the pack score in this area. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. We were optimistic to discover that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is not a bad score. In determining our nursing scores, we weigh both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is far below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this nursing home got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this area. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving patients more often.

Switching gears to the next area, this nursing home really did not perform very well in this category either. With a poor grade of F in short-term care, this is about as as uninspiring as it gets. In determining these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. With a grade of this caliber for this area, we were not surprised to learn this facility was well below average in multiple staffing areas we looked at. It provided substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.